Pandas

We arrived in Beijing in smog thick enough to swim in. Everyone on the bus felt the sting in their throat, and half of us donned face masks. It took more than an hour in bumper to bumper traffic to get to the zoo. Charmed by the pandas, natives and tourists saw the zoo through their iPhones. Another forty-minute crawl brought us to a restaurant, a favorite of Ray, our guide, who is a Beijing native. We saw traffic tie itself into a knot on the way to the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, but now we are here, travel weary, but happy to be in the capital.Read more